Thread: Why is the 1st shave after honing so disagreeable?

I did my monthly hone job on my beloved W&B. The first shave was so shockingly mediocre, I thought, "I must not have honed enough to get the bevel back." But then I felt it with my thumb & thought, "Goddamn, it FEELS sharp. Let's not jump to conclusions. I'll try one more shave before I go back to the hone." Guess what? BBS. The shave of kings.

Why is the first shave so bad? It's almost like it's "too sharp" or something...instead of gliding smoothly across my face, the edge wants to skip & dig in. But all it takes is one shave (plus 50 laps on the strop, of course), and that nasty, uncivilized edge smooths right out.

Anyone out there with a microscope know what's going on? Would it help to do a double- or triple-round of stropping after honing? At the moment, I only do 10X Cr02 and 50X plain leather after honing, the same as I do before any other shave.

Although you might get many different opinions of the use of linen strops, I think that is what yer missing here.... Try adding 50 laps on linen, then up your stropping on leather to 75-100 right after the honing and paste, and see if that doesn't smooth the 1st shave out....

If not try the plain newspaper trick for like 30-40 laps

Originally Posted by gssixgun

Try adding 50 laps on linen, then up your stropping on leather to 75-100 right after the honing and paste, and see if that doesn't smooth the 1st shave out....

This works for me. Great shaves right off the hone. With a 15x magnifying glass, you can see that the bevel has been burnished and I think that's what does it.

Bevel burnishing, eh? I can't see that with my 10X lupe (came to me by way of my grandpa, who was a jeweler). As for linen...I have an old strop with a linen side, but it's got some fairly aggressive abrasive compound on it. I'll need to clean all that crap off it first. I recall seeing some threads about cleaning old linen strops. Time to search the forum...

If I am getting a harsh feel on the first pass or just not smooth enough I find that 5 roundtrips with Chrome Ox on a piece of felt is magic.

You probably won't be able to get all of the abrasive compound out of that strop, the general rule is that once a surface is pasted, there's no changing it.

But yes, more stropping is the key for me. I've never used pastes with any regularity and find that ~100 laps on a good leather strop smooth out any edge that is fine enough to be considered for a test shave.

A finer finishing stone couldn't hurt, but isn't at all necessary.

After chrome leather I goto my hanging strop for at least a 60 count. No isses with rough shaves if I did my part at the stones

Originally Posted by DwarvenChef

After chrome leather I goto my hanging strop for at least a 60 count. No isses with rough shaves if I did my part at the stones

Dito that. Sounds to me like you should play around with the post honing stropping to solve your issue.

X

Could it be, that a slight wire edge was formed? The first shave knocked that edge off, then the stropping smoothed things out.

P.S What happened to your bevel? That part struck me as odd, thought one only needs to set a bevel once?

What you didn't say was if this happened last month as well or before, or what hone you finished on

I think the additional cro did it on the second round.